A study of strain-induced crystallization of polymers

The response of polymers depends on their morphology. One of the challenges in modeling from a continuum perspective is how to incorporate the microstructural features into the homogenized continuum model. Here, we use a recent framework that associates different natural states and material symmetries with distinct microstructures of the body (Rajagopal, K.R., Wineman, A.S., 1992. International Journal of Plasticity 8, 385; Rajagopal, K.R., 1995. Reports of the Institute for Computational and Applied Mechanics, University of Pittsburgh; Rajagopal, K.R., Srinivasa, A.S., 1995. International Journal of Plasticity 11, 653; Rajagopal, K.R., Srinivasa, A.S., 1999. ZAMP 50, 459). We study the problem of strain-induced crystallization of polymeric materials, in particular, we study the problem of uniaxial stretching of polymeric materials and the subsequent crystallization and the predictions of the theory are compared with experimental results. (C) 2001 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.